Kentucky win ignites NBA age discussion

It’s hard to imagine John Calipari set out to be an agent of change beyond altering public perception of him, which likely won’t ever change anyway.

But Kentucky’s national championship victory seems to have enough of the right people talking about tinkering with the NBA’s age rules again.

In the six NBA drafts since the league instituted a rule that says players must be 19 to enter the league, no team with a marquee “one-and-done” player won the NCAA title.

The Wildcats just did it with two likely one-and-done guys, as some project forwards Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist to be the top two picks in this year’s draft.

All of the sudden, critics say Kentucky is “taking advantage” of the system. Some would like to increase the age to 20, forcing two years of college in most cases, and some would like to make it three years.

A smart idea would be to copy baseball. If you’re good enough for the NBA, then come on down.

Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose, John Wall, Tyreke Evans and Kyrie Irving never would have spent a year in school if the same rules in effect for Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Dwight Howard were still around.

Baseball tells those who go to four-year universities that they must stay for at least three seasons, which includes a loophole of transferring to a junior college or just starting at a junior college.

But can you imagine Durant spending a year at some place like Navarro College before entering the draft? Or transferring there after a year at Duke just so he could be draft eligible?

Some argue that a player should be able to turn pro whenever he chooses. That the NBA has changed its rules so often doesn’t help its case here, but MLB’s approach seems like a solid one.

In the five drafts with one-and-done players, 47 freshmen declared for the draft and 40 were chosen.

Not much could have kept those who went undrafted out of the draft. Most are tales of failed bids at major colleges, such as Nate Miles, who calls Cornerstone Christian one of the several high schools he attended before he got Connecticut in some trouble.

He spent a year at Southern Idaho before the NBA said no thanks in 2009. Eurobasket.com says Miles played eight games for the Dayton AirStrikers of the Premier Basketball League in 2010-11.

Davis and Kidd-Gilchrist look like sure-fire NBA success stories, but Kentucky has a perfect example of how the one-and-done rule fails the kinds of players who don’t have their skills.

Daniel Orton was the last of the Wildcats’ five first-round picks in 2010 at No. 29 when John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins went No. 1 and No. 5 overall.

The 6-foot-10 center has six NBA games to his credit with the Magic, all this season, totaling just six points and three rebounds. In his rookie season, he had a season-ending knee injury is his second game with the D-League’s New Mexico Thunderbirds.

The Magic announced in January that they would decline to pick up his option for the 2012-13 season.

So, heading into what could have been his senior year, there’s a chance he’s out of the NBA and going overseas if he wants to keep playing. Hope he saved some of that $2.1 million he earned for rehabbing his knee and having a front-row seat to Howard’s soap-opera season.

What are the odds he could have made so much more had he been a part of this year’s Kentucky team as a junior?

Most will never make $2.1 million in their lifetime, but it’s hard to say Orton, 21, and in need of a job soon, really “took advantage” of the rule.

dpils@express-news.net

ONE-AND-DONES BY THE NUMBERS

A quick look at the some of the best and worst the NBA’s 19-year-old age limit, better known as the one-and-done rule, has given us the past six seasons. Good rule of thumb: Big men should stay in school.